


Vanishing Act

by Kat



Category: Dollhouse
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-21
Updated: 2009-12-21
Packaged: 2017-10-04 19:46:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,198
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/33450
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kat/pseuds/Kat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Claire leaves the Dollhouse after 'Vows'.  Echo finds her and helps her remember who she is.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Vanishing Act

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Mercurie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mercurie/gifts).



"The things one feels absolutely certain about are never true."  
(Oscar Wilde)

 

The world had gone topsy-turvy, the ground she stood upon no longer solid. Nothing was certain, that was certain. Not her name, not her body. Not even her memories were her own. In all her life she'd never felt such disorientation (had she?) so really, what was a little extra – going above ground, back into the world. It was just one more layer of shifting upon already unsteady plates.

 

She hadn't expected Adelle to allow her to leave, especially under the circumstances. Perhaps she felt guilty for restoring Victor's appearance while allowing Claire's to remain. (Had she not done her best?) No, she laughed at herself. She was forgetting again. She would hardly be irreplaceable. Just install the Saunders program into some other head and, Voila! Another doctor ready and waiting to be of service. Maybe Topher would take this opportunity to create a more … yielding version of the dear doctor. Unexpectely, Adelle had allowed her departure, in fact, she encouraged it. Had even given her use of this car.  With one finger she stabbed at a button and the car's roof slid back. The Los Angeles traffic began to give way to the more easy flow of the 101 as she drove west. Her first thought was to go home. Her older sister, Deanne, in Ventura. Though they had a falling out some years ago, over their parents' estate, there was some part of Claire that still longed for her sister when she got in trouble.

 

As she merged onto the highway she shook her head. First – who was to tell whether there even was a Deanne on 425 Sansome Street? If there was, would she actually be Dr. Saunder's sister? If she was, would she be the _other_ doctor's sister? And if so, how to explain the sex change? Home was no longer home, nor family her family.

 

So she reached the ocean, turned north and kept driving. The salt air cleared her head and for the first time since she emerged from the Dollhouse she could breathe. And so she turned off the 101 when it veered inland and took the 1 along the Pacific. Even when she reached the fog of San Francisco, she kept the top down and kept driving. North, through the city, through the hills of Marin, through Bolinas and Point Reyes and Inverness. Through Mendocino and she thought she might vibrate right out of her seat if she drank any more coffee but she could neither stop driving nor sleep. She drove until the 1 merged back to the 101 and then she reached Eureka, a tiny town on the Northern California coast, just before the border. Nearly thirteen hours after she departed, she finally stopped. She was 700 miles from the Dollhouse and it felt like nowhere near as many as necessary.

 

She found a small Inn at the edge of town, at the edge of things, where land met water and sky. Though the proprietor seemed friendly enough, his questions felt pointed – who are you, where are you from, how long do you plan to stay? Was there a vagueness in the back of his eyes? Were there Dolls here, in the middle of nowhere? She almost got back in the car, but could not see how she would manage even another mile.

 

So she smiled and simpered and lied and paid cash – a lot of cash. “Fred,” she said. “From Dallas. Staying a couple of weeks, if that's not a problem?” Enough money and enough batting eyelashes and there were no problems. Though she had no doubt that Adelle could break such a ruse, or maybe had a tracking beacon on the car, it felt safer this way.

 

The proprietor smiled back and asked no questions, merely handed her the keys. And she found herself in a room not much larger than her office in the Dollhouse (quite a bit smaller, were one to be honest), but with a tiny balcony and a view of the ocean. She tossed her bag onto the bed and slid open the door to the balcony. She collapsed into the cheap plastic chair and did not move. Below her waves crashed onto rocks, wearing them slowly away, minute by minute, hour by hour, day by day, year by year. She knew how they felt.

 

Days passed. Maybe a week. Maybe more. She ate when she had to, slept seldom. She sat outside in the fog and the mist and the rare sun and she watched how the clouds shifted over the sun and the moon, how the waves grew and shrank, how the ocean rose and receded.

 

Sometimes she searched her memories, testing each one to see whether she could tease out what was hers (whoever that was) and what was his. Though... which his? Topher? Saunders? It was unclear, even to her. But every single one felt the same. They began to slide into one another, and then to turn as grey as the sky above and the water below. They grew thin at the edges, frayed, and then to dissipate like fog in strong sun. When they were gone, she just sat and watched and felt herself begin to fade as well.

 

Suddenly a new sound intruded on her solitude. A sharp rapping – flesh against wood. She tried to ignore it at first but it kept coming, growing more insistent. Then a voice, and for the first time in some while she stirred and stood.

 

“Whiskey!” That one voice. Urgent. Smoky. A voice that rang through her body like no other, and touched pieces of herself (memory? dream?) and set them alight.

 

Whisky – a drink, a letter, a girl. An active. A doll. With fingers just remembering motion she slipped the chain from the door and clicked back the dead bolt. “That is not who I am,” she said to the dark-haired woman standing there. Echo. Or one facet of her. Which persona? Questions that set her heart tripping – Echo... to take her back? To bring her to the Attic? She knew she would be found. She should have kept going.

 

“It is. It is not all of you,” Echo replied and the serenity of her tone, the clarity of her gaze let Whiskey know. No Active, Doll. It meant Ballard would be close at hand, but she didn't care.

 

And then Echo reached out, an echo of a former action, and touched her fingers gently to Whiskey's scars. “Will you let me in?”

 

Saunders and Whiskey – no and yes warred. Until something deeper broke the tie. With shaking hands, Whiskey clasped Echo's hand in her own and drew her into the room. She closed the door behind her and locked it. Only one person in.

 

“Your room is so dark,” Echo said. Her voice was pitched soft. Somewhere in her tone Whiskey heard the susurrus of the ocean just outside the balcony doors.

 

“I don't mind the dark,” Whiskey said.

 

“Everyone needs the light.” And Echo closed the doors on the Pacific, drew the curtains and pulled the chain to turn on the lamp by the bedside.

 

For a moment Whiskey blinked in the flood of light. She couldn't remember the last time she'd bothered to turn it on.

 

“You don't look your best.” The words were not spoken unkindly.

 

“I don't feel my best. And I have not looked my best in some time,” Whiskey replied. Echo regarded her with those dark eyes – deep and changing as the Pacific. There was the same sense of danger looking into them – Whiskey felt as though she could be swallowed, lost with no knowledge of how to swim. As if Echo could ask anything of her and she would agree. Even should Echo ask her to go back to that place and give up her life again.

 

“How do you do it,” Whiskey found herself asking, not much above a whisper. There was so much she wanted to know that she could barely settle on just one question at a time.

 

Echo simply watched her, waiting for her to finish.

 

“How do you get into the chair, knowing that you will never again be who you were? How do you allow them to erase you whenever they choose?”

 

Echo cocked her head to the side, as though considering. “They do not erase me. Everyone I was, I am. Though none of them – and all of them – are me.”

 

“But that's not how it is for me,” Whiskey protested. “This is all I am. I only have this body, and it is not even mine. It is not enough... it is not truth.”

 

“Who among us knows truth?”

 

“Adelle? Topher?” Whiskey couldn't keep the bitterness from her voice. “Or at least they know one truth. They know everything about us. Those things you only contemplate at four in the morning... those things you never tell anyone. They know. Hell, Topher created those thoughts. How do you stand it?” Whiskey crossed her arms over her chest but she still shivered. Some time in between coming inside and speaking to Echo the cold had gotten inside her and she could not be rid of it.

 

“Come,” Echo said and it was her turn to take Whiskey's hand and draw her into the bathroom.

 

It was so easy to just let go, Whiskey thought as Echo slowly slid the shirt over her head, her skirt down over her hips. Her underwear followed. She didn't move as Echo disrobed and their clothes puddled at their bare feet. Echo's toenails were a bright, bubblegum pink – incongruous with her somber attitude. Whiskey's own toes were unadorned, her last pedicure long since chipped away. Echo turned away only for a moment, to turn on the shower.

 

They faced each other then, fully, until Whiskey looked down, her hair hanging in curtains over her cheeks. Her ruined face. Then Echo's hands were in her hair, smoothing it back behind her ears, softly as though she were the mother Whiskey did not remember. She didn't want to meet Echo's eyes, but then her fingertips were under her chin, tipping her head up and she did and there was no judgment there. Nor horror or pity. Only peace, deep and abiding.

 

Echo urged her into the shower and water poured over her skin, raising goosebumps. Echo's hands trailed over her shoulders, down her arms, across to her hips and back up. Whiskey trembled under the touch. It had been so long since she had been touched... so long and she ached for it. Her body tingled to life, heating in ways it hadn't in time unmeasured.

 

“Remember,” Echo breathed in her ear, and Echo's hands drifted down her spine, over her hips and slipped between her legs.

 

Whiskey gasped and leaned back. Echo's body was soft and firm at once. Curved, but muscled. Familiar. As Echo slipped her finger over her, slowly, memories bubbled to the surface of her thoughts and burst in her mind like fireworks.

 

At first they were Dr. Saunder's memories. Arguing with Topher, with Laurence about the Dolls. Treating pulled muscles and wounds both minor and not so. Time scrolled backwards until she was in the art room once again and Alpha stood over her with the scissors.

 

She cried out as he pierced her skin and tore, but Echo pulled her closer. Echo's lips brushed across her nape and when Whiskey turned to face her, Echo kissed her. Took her cries into her own body. Their arms twined around each other, and the water poured over them both and memories flooded her. At the ball, Whiskey and Echo on assignment together. Echo leaned close and played with her hair. Whiskey laughed, they weren't supposed to interact, but neither one wanted to stop. They found their way together in assignments, and in the House. In Art their easels were beside one another. In Yoga they stood side by side, watching each other's body move. In sleep their pods were next to each other. Whiskey was number one, but Echo was number two, and neither were competitive. One and Two came together.

 

But even beneath that, deeper than Echo and Whiskey or Caroline and Amy, there was more. There was everyone and no one and simply one.

 

When they fell into bed together, still wet from the shower, their hands slipped along each other's skin, they whispered secret memories into each other's ears, their legs wrapped around hips, backs arching and their hands were busy, speaking words of their own. They rocked together and in turn. They cried out together and clung to each other as though they might drown in memory.

 

Finally, as dawn began to turn the sky grey after the black of night, Echo spoke. “Come back. I need you.”

 

Whiskey rested her head on Echo's breast, her hand splayed across her stomach. For the first time since she understood who she was, and who she wasn't, she didn't need to ask who 'you' was. It was enough to be needed. Who she was went deeper than everything else. “I am already there.”

**Author's Note:**

> This is a work of fanfiction. No characters belong to me. I make no profit.


End file.
